Thursday, 12 May 2016

The man best known for cofounding the tech blogs Gizmodo and Engadget, Peter Rojas, said today that Google will be unveiling a new platform known as “Android VR” along with a standalone VR headset at Google I/O next week.Rojas says the experience will not quite be up to Vive or Oculus Rift, which given that it is standalone and using mobile-grade hardware (i.e., will not use your phone or a connected PC to power the visuals, it has its own full mobile chipset) makes a lot of sense. At least one mention of Android VR has also been spotted in the latest Unreal Engine preview.
According to our source, Android VR may include not only a headset, but a controller of some kind – it’s unclear if we’re talking about Vive-style hand controllers or a single gamepad-style device, or something in-between. As you may have intuited by now (it’s kind of obvious), Android N will also support VR – though we expect Google to bake in VR support to an extent that gets all the way down to things like the homescreen. This could mean a new, VR-specific Android launcher or launcher layout. Finally, we know that Google’s internal codename for the project is “Mirage,” which seems quite fitting.